QUANTICO: Russia or China could “overrun” US allies at the outbreak of war, senior military leaders fear, and our plan to stop them is very much a work in progress. Iraq and Syria have given sneak previews of how the US can combine, say, hackers, satellites, special operators, and airstrikes in a single offensive, but we’re not yet ready to launch such a multi-domain operation against a major power.

“There is a good chance… we’d lose the opening stages of this war,” said one participant in a high-level all-service conference on multi-domain operations held here last month. (I was allowed to attend on the condition I not identify anyone). “Parts of the Pacific, parts of Europe are probably going to be overrun before we can gather ourselves.”

“If deterrence fails, we’re not going to be able to prevent loss of terrain and populations,” the speaker continued. “Just look at the Baltic States,” where every potential target is just a few hours’ drive from the Russian border and the NATO presence — one multinational battalion each in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland — is often dismissed as a “tripwire.” With US allies this exposed, the speaker said, “we’d give ground, and we’d have to consolidate and gather our resources to make a counter push.”

But when we try to counterattack, today’s adversaries won’t allow the US four or five months to mobilize, deploy, and prepare the way Saddam Hussein did twice (in 1990-91 and 2002-3), added another participant: “We’re predictable. They’ve built a system to take advantage of that predictability.”

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — a former joint commander himself — has pledged to make the US “strategically predictable for our allies” (i.e. dependable) but “operationally unpredictable for any adversary.” Part of being unpredictable is developing ways of fighting, and the concept with the most momentum in the last few years is multi-domain operations. The different US services have long worked with each other in limited ways, most notably when Air Force, Navy, and Marine aircraft support Army and Marine ground forces. But the multi-domain concept wants to jointness to a much higher level: seamless integration of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace over vast warzones, with each service both assisting and being assisted by the others.

more at the link

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The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

I see this military psycho babble a lot. The logic sequence quoted in the article is:

1 China or Russia will roll over any adversary in their sphere (gee, this has been true since the cold war)2 The US won't have time to mobilize large forces required to stop this aggression3 Mattis has a cute phrase that says we must be both predictable and unpredictable4 The flavor-of-the-month for being unpredictable is multi-domain warfare

Somehow number 4 solves number 2. And somehow number 4 is unpredictable?

I spent a lot of time this year reading the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Planning Guidance. It's really scary that we spent tons of man-hours producing it, and it's really scary that people think this is a meaningful strategy.

It's really scary that we spent tons of man-hours producing it, and it's really scary that people think this is a meaningful strategy.

when was the last time we had any meaningful strategy at the national level? 1985?

That was REFORGER wasn't it? A race game before your kit got overrun. At least we had easily deployable mines (air and artillery), as well as cluster munitions back then. Unfortunately, iirc those are all now banned by the UN, or sold to Saudi to use in Yemen. Such wisdom...

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The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley

Foul Temptress! (Mirth replying to Gus)

On a good day, our legislature has the prestige of a drunk urinating on a wall at 4am and getting most of it on his shoe. On a good day Steelgrave

It's kind of silly to investigate whether or not a Clinton is lying. That's sort of like investigating why the sky is blue. Banzai_Cat